A seven-month-old boy was mauled to death by a pack of stray dogs in Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal, police said on Saturday.

A video of the incident, which occurred in the Ayodhya Nagar area of the city on Wednesday, went viral on social media and was brought to the notice of the police and the administration, an official said.

The police exhumed the baby's body, which his family had buried on the day of the incident, and sent it for post-mortem on Saturday, he said.

The baby belonged to a family of labourers. Before the incident, his mother placed him on the ground as she had some work nearby, inspector Mahesh Nilhare of Ayodhya Nagar police station told PTI.

A pack of dogs bit the child and dragged him away, he said.

People in the vicinity raised an alarm, but by then, the dogs had disfigured and severed an arm of the infant, killing him on the spot, the official said.

The child's family, hailing from Guna district, buried his body in a village close to Bhopal, he said, adding that the police will register a first information report (FIR) in connection with the case.

Meanwhile, an official said that the district administration has provided a financial help of Rs 50,000 to the boy's family, and another Rs 50,000 will be disbursed soon.

The Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) has caught eight stray dogs from the Ayodhya Nagar area, and the district collector has asked the civic body to run a campaign to catch stray dogs, he added.

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